take a deep breath

Okay people here's a list for you.
1. earthquake(miyagi/sendai)
2. Tsunami
3. More earthquakes
4. Evacuations
5. Nuclear Reactor blows 1 time
6. Volcano Eruptions(this has been going on for months)
7. Reactor explosions two more times, 30k radius of contamination and evacuations.


Here in Nichinan there was only a 2 meter waves, and the sirens went off. The good news is that I now know my evacuation point and set up my emergency kit. First there were the news reports that just showed the facts here in Japan, but now America has gotten ahold of the reports and is sensationalizing them beyond all reason. It's bad, I don't want to belittle what I have never seen or experienced, but after 22 years in America I know what they can do to news. They go about reporting completely incorrectly. While Japan keeps saying everything is okay with the Nuclear reactors, I will use the words of a reporter here, It's like their babysitting the plants until they go, rather than actually containing anything. There's radiation all over this planet, in planes, x-rays, just living, I'm far enough away that I'm not too worried. It's business as usual here.

Busy

hallelujah Sweet jebus, I got the tickets, yes BIGBANG tickets. Sad that my life has been reduced to this? Oh well, I applied to 5 separate concerts and read all the reply emails one by one and each one rejected me until!!!!! Tokyo on the 15th of May in Chiba Tokyo. WOO!! I got my plane ticket, my hotel, and finally we have a full group of six to annoy Japanese fans with. Many of us are tall, or foreign enough that we will be the strangest group speaking half Japanese, and random English. My tallness will be an amazing asset to make sure I can see the best! I've been busy non-stop with school and planning because the Japanese school year ends in March. I'm pretty much on the last leg of visiting my schools for the last time this school year. Several of my schools are merging so I will be teaching at the new and improved Udo chu-gako.
On another note there have been many small earthquakes and the volcano ash has made a reappearance. Its pitch black this time and is great fun while playing jump rope on a windy open area. My journaling is making slow and steady progress and Ive managed to fill two big notebooks. I was scared that my art is declining so I have been drawing two large pics a day for 2 months and my contour drawing have gotten pretty badass. My woodcuts are slow progress. The wood is very expensive but amazing so I'm being very careful carving it for fear I ruin a $100 piece of cedar. I managed to make a comb and 2 small prints but it was un-preped wood and was hell to carve.
Golden week plans are complete!
Kyushu round about trip. Its the Holy grail of kyushu traveling.
1. Nichian leave
2. Beppu and Yuifuin- hot spring town have a sweet ryokan and all the hot water and sand baths we want.
3. Mt. Aso- Biggest volcano is the world. Gonna climb nearby and take the cable car to the top if its not spewing toxic gas
4. Nagasaki- Just hang out super historic and plenty of temples to hit up.
5. Shimabara- old town mostly going here for the car ferry. Giant buddah statue
6. Kumamoto- castel and a perfect mixture of historic and upscale.

Then drag our selves back to Nichinan. I'm driving the whole time which brings to information about my car.
Shakken!! the dreaded word was do this month on the 1st. First estimate of the cost \190000 almost died of a heart attack. Literally fell over. After panicking and getting two more appraisals got it for \70000 about $700. It needed alot of repairs but now its good for two years its basically my insurance. Google shakken for more info cause I hates it. Also with cars I can mention I am taking the driving test at the end of the month. I have about two weeks off because of school break so I'm gonna drag my American ass to the test from hell and try my damndest to not make a fool of myself. Knock on wood.
And just as I type this mayhem breaks out in my office because in Tokyo there was a 6meter tsunami after a 6.5 earthquake. Shit, all my schools are on the coast so the workers are all calling my schools because theres an alert out here.

kagoshima part 2

So long ago I traveled to Kagoshima for a vacation to yakushima and the volcano their. Little did I know that with access to a car 3 hours would become a normal driving time for me. The original trip was 5 hours on a train and shorten drastically because I didnt have to go to miyazaki then kagoshima. Then on friday with my copious amounts of Daikyu I decided to go to BIGBANG 3-D!!! The last day it was showing was friday so I took an hour of time and hurried off in my car with Lola and Muqing. So the drive sucked it was long, twisty, turny, and very bright because the sun was going down. Lola didn't want to see bigbang so we dropped her off at the main station in rush hour traffic and then agonized while waiting in the giant line of traffic some how by a miracle we didn't make a single wrong turn getting there, and ran into the theater to much cheering on our part. Bought the tickets a whooping $25 (normal tickets are $20) but this movie was deliciously 3-D. The glasses werent those cheap things you toss in a basket either, they looked like the new glasses that come with 3-D tv's. So to make a long story short there were only 10ish people in the theater and we gorged on potato fry and chiffon cake-e seto's and cried with joy at the spicyness of bigbang. Afterwards all jazzed from the movie with hauled ass to a local Aeon(mall) to hunt down their new CD, but alas it wont be out in japan until march 4, while in korea there CD came out February 24th along with their new Bigshow in korea. I shall be waiting for my tickets!! Then we grabbed Lola after being hopelessly lost for around 30 minutes. Headed back and arrived in the nichi-nan around 2 am after driving through fog.

Takachiho Gorge

We headed out to the gorge on Thursday leaving at around 8:00am. We made a stop at the conbini, and picked up our re-entry permits so we can hopefully do some traveling. But before any of this gets underway at the conbini I have already got my purchases and am waiting outside. When lo-and-behold a really hot guy in a solid red jumpsuit with an epic japan man-afro. It was fabulous no one here has awesome hair except when you count anime/host hair styles. As Im staring at this guy I look through the glass door at Muqin only to find her dancing on the other side of the door.FAIL... Then I also notice all of the cars are honking and I see a man standing in the street bowing to every car that goes by and waving...uhhh what?? apparently this man was running for some government position and that was him campaigning..okay. Then finally I notice the van next to the boxy mobile is filled with workers eating cup ramen next to me. Where the F did they get the hot water?!?
Okay now fast foward 5 hours were in nobeoka still driving and we stop for Yakiniku of course so we can eat mass quantities of beef for \1100. Delicious.Continue on to multiple book stores and we arrive in Takachiho at 3:00pm. We check into our super fancy ryokan called God's house sounds nice right? A worker greets us and shows us to our room and we then head out to the gorge before it gets too dark out. We ride on boats and bother everyone around us. We ask this poor couple to take a picture of us but they were good-natured about it. We buy our omiyage and head back to the ryokan to eat the largest dinner I had EVER eaten. Beef, vegetables, fresh fruits, more meats, mountain vegetables, wine, and salads. I barely get through the meal when we have to run out to catch a bus to a traditional dance performance. We take a bath in the super nice cedar tubs then call it a night.The next day we hit up the takachiho shrine, a look out, the shrine where it was a cave. Then we drove back into Nobeoka and went to the Aeon mall for some shopping. It was pretty small but we picked up some lunch and snacks and headed back to Nichinan. After driving forever we were almost in miyazaki when we ran across an awesome second hand store with clothes, cds, manga, action figures, dvds and all sorts of stuff. We got back to Nichinan around 10ish. We drove back way too slow and ate probably 4 bags of chips in the process.

schools

So heres the list a total of 1,977 students and I've taught each one of them. No I dont know their names but they're all great.

Elementary School

Agata Elementary School - 393 students
Abaratsu Elementary School - 328 students
Sakuragaoka Elementary School - 106 students
Ushio Elementary School - 10 students
Udo Elementary School - 23 students
Agata Higashi Elementary School - 477 students
Katagami Elementary School - 124 students
Yowara Elementary School - 31 studnets

Junior High

Abaratsu Junior High - 234 students
Agata Junior High - 138 students
Udo Junior High - 79 students
Yowara Junior High - 31 students

Special school- student for what ever reason dont want to/cant go to school. This is not special education classes.

partay

So, mid year seminar. Lets talk about it... It might have been the worst day ever in japan. Lets start with waking up at 6am, and getting ready, packing my bags. Only to get a phone call from my supervisor saying that the trains are closed from nichinan to aoshima. Boooo.... So no biggie I will take my car, but WAIT! I cant take my car because its during work hours. Okay then I'll take the bus! What time does it leave? 7am really? thanks for telling me this at 6:55am and the pick up spot was in abaratsu aka 10 minutes away. Mad dash to station in my car(dont ask why I could drive my car to the station) get lost, then ultimately miss the bus, find the station and chillax til the next bus at 8am. Well seminar starts at 9am and the bus ride is almost 2 hours so I'm gonna be late after being warned repeatedly not to be late. Then almost like I planned it I go into my wallet to check how much cash I have on me and lo-and-behold! no wallet. Fan fucking tastic. I drive back to my house get my wallet to arrive exactly as the bus is pulling in. I forgot my facemask so I inhaled what seemed like a pound of ash. Get on the bus and wait. About two hoursish later get off and then get a taxi to the center. Well the taxi took us to the wrong place, then I had to take another taxi to the correct place. Get there late listen to the speakers, finish the day. I hitch a ride to my hotel then procede to get ready for the night ahead.
Trashtastic night! The theme is hostess and hosts. So we dress up, I found a mini tiara and cap, muqing goes as a host, devon and tiff have awesome sparkly dresses. Its a nomihodai for \3000 about $30ish in USD. All you can drink for 3 hours for a flat price. We take care of our 30 in an hour and dance it up. Muqing wins the host division and I get 3rd in hostess. Not a bad haul. Walking back to the hotel I guess in my stupor I decided to tell a random man that his hair looked nice and tried to touch it...oops.. No idea how I got back and now I am sure I will think any guy looks good if he's wearing a scarf.(called muffler in japan.) The next was surprisingly okay and checked out..

Weekends

So the volcano nearby erupted spewing ash and rocks everywhere. There's no lava near me but the ash persists casting a haze over everything in sight. You can't even see the giant mountains in the haze. Lately the ash is subsiding, but it keeps blowing our way. My car is suffering and I have to change the air filter not to mention its filthy. The ash falls like some weird snow and the eruptions sound like bombs going off. Not to mention our share of earthquakes lately. I think the earth is PO'd, take a look at australia. They are screwed. Luckily it rained about a day ago turning all the ash to mud... Yet people are still trying to sweep the ash.
I was going to go to Nagasaki on my birthday weekend, but because of the volcano and bird flu it is a no go. Instead I celebrated my birthday. My co-workers surprised me at 8pm as I was in the office returning from Juku class. The gave me cards, flowers, and sho-chu. Fabulous, they are the best office ever. Then I went with Lola and Kurumi-san to Muqing's house. There I was surprised by more of my friends and office workers. We partook of cake and laughed at all the Bigbang decorations. I got awesome gifts including bigbang bodyspray(hahahha), sweet shochu glass, doll set, cup noodle lip holder, bookmarks, t-shirts, cookies, and posters from my students. My students made the cutest pictures that they wrote in English on. The responses ranged from, you are good at english, to you are my sister. SOoooo sweet. This weekend I decided to go to takachiro gorge. It a pleasant 5 hour drive and there might be snow there.